Excellent but underrated film

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Once again, Almodovar doesn not fail to demonstrate his masterful skills in casting intricate webs of human relationships of lust and love and his superb cinematic story-telling.In the very limited timeframe of slightly longer than one and a half hour, the audience is treated to a fast-paced and mysterious love pentagon which stems from one person to another person and which eventually cast a web tangling the five main characters inexplicably. The conflicts between love and lust, guilt and innocence, love and sympathy, trust and control, an old, dark and cynical police state of Spain and a brave, outspoken and contemporary Spain……all fused into a melting pot of a heart-throbbing and colourful romance thriller. One of the less flamboyant but more accessible piece from Almodovar.

Another overstuffed and convoluted vivacious mess from that oft-adored consummately colorful artiste from Spain, Aldmodovar. I'm not quite certain why he felt compelled to include a political prologue and epilogue to what is a melodrama with a sliver of social commentary. Typically, the performances are impassioned and committed, especially Bardem who foreshadows his miraculous wooden turn in "Te Sea Inside." However, what mostly troubled me is Aldmodovar's salacious yearning to portray the men as unworthy of these delectable yet self-righteous femme fatales. Admirable as it may be to avoid such seemingly obvious scenes that display evidence of spousal abuse, Almodovar's alignment with the piously important 'Rabal' smacks more of his selfish sexual longing than out of narrative obligation. That being said, who could avoid feeling longing when such fine physical specimens are shot with such desirable yummyness. My goodness, am I envious of the Spanish skin tone. Both the characterizations and narrative plotting are strongest from the late 1st act through the end of the second. The rest is all a bit far-fetched and trying.

Victor, the son of a prostitute, tries to hook up with Elena, a druggie with whom he'd had a previous tryst (his first). She resists, the cops are called, and there's a standoff between Victor and policemen David and Sancho. There's a struggle, and a gun is fired, leaving David paralyzed and sending Victor to jail.When Victor gets out of jail, his mind is on bitter revenge, especially after he discovers that Elena, now clean and sober, has married the invalid David, who's now a paralympic basketball star. Victor gets a job working at the orphanage funded and operated by Elena (but he's not stalking her, no) and begins to romance Clara, the battered wife of Sancho.Each of the five characters, unavoidably intertwined, is complex and morally ambiguous. What are Victor's true intentions? What, even more importantly, are his capabilities? Is Sancho properly haunted by his treatment of Clara and of that fateful night that brought him, David, and Victor together? If Clara does leave Sancho, where will she turn - or is she simply another turn-the-cheek spouse? Does David have a sense of moral superiority because he no longer has use of his lower limbs and therefore has suffered more than most people? And which is stronger, Elena's lust or her loyalty? The quintet, whose lives were forever changed that one night, find themselves drawn back together in a web of intrigue of their own design. All of the actors are fantastic, particularly Francesca Neri, as Elena, and Liberto Rabal, as Victor. The on screen chemistry among all five leads is palpable; no one feels they were just dropped into the movie indiscriminately. Pedro Almodovar's complicated tale is never preachy, and none of the characters are stereotypical. Not all cops are noble, not all drug addicts are irredeemable, not all orphanage operators are perfect, and not all criminals are despicable. Pretty obvious stuff in the real world, but in the land of movies characters are typically painted with as broad a brush as possible in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The movie is tense without veering toward melodrama, and although it begins rather slowly, the final twenty minutes or so are unsettling, nerve-wracking suspense. I defy you to sit complacently while Elena approaches Victor's barrio apartment.

If you intend to see such a film, I warn you that you should not miss any scene if you really want to understand its intelligently arranged plot. Sometimes I see Almodovar as a kind of Victor Hugo of cinema because he makes various complicated scenes not coherently inserted in the film that you should put in order step by step. May be in this way the excitement increases and you will be more anxious to know the end of the film. Javier Bardem (David) played the role of ex-agent and ex-basketball player who was shot in fact accidentally. The Italian actress Francesca Neri is David's wife, and young Liberto Rabal is Victor, the man supposedly spoiling the lives of others, and strong lover. Love and sex scenes of the film are intense as if they were real. The behavior of the actors and actresses in the film is convincingly human, i.e. people having their merits and shortcomings in their lives, there is no fictitious models of behavior. Almodovar, as usual, tries to reflect the reality. There are many good dramas in cinema but this one is probably one of the best.